As the number of services using packet-based communication networks has grown, the variety of codecs in use has grown as well. There is a need for packet-based service interoperability, and consequently a need for endpoints to communicate without regard to the vendor or service supplying the endpoints. If the endpoints are designed to support several codecs, then codec negotiation can increase the likelihood of being able to communicate with other endpoints. Nevertheless, the proliferation of codec types exceeds the practical capability of endpoints to offer all needed codecs at a reasonable cost. For voice services, calls between services using different codecs can be routed through the PSTN, but only at increased cost and reduced quality of service. Hence transcoding has become an important challenge for VoIP and multimedia networks. There are other solutions to address the need for transcoding, e.g., on board dedicated transcoding resource at the border elements and so on. However, these may not be practical (e.g. expensive or not available for some service providers).
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for providing centralized or regionalized transcoding in a packet network, e.g., a VoIP network.